


life, ongoing

by BeesKnees



Series: death, suspended [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Anal Sex, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe says "Nicolo" 35 more times, Joe's half: where is Nicky???, M/M, Nicky's POV, Nicky's half: I'm sorry but this is upsetting Joe so I must be going
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:00:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25922476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeesKnees/pseuds/BeesKnees
Summary: After they're captured, Nicky and Joe are separated from one another.__Nicky's POV.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: death, suspended [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1881268
Comments: 41
Kudos: 543





	life, ongoing

He knows Joe's voice before he knows anything, sometimes. Before he knows who he is or has an understanding of what he is – human, man, immortal. Sometimes on the cold brink of the universe, when whatever makes Nicky _Nicky_ is still converging once more, all he knows is Joe's voice.

This time is like that. 

Before he even knows he's alive again – before he even knows he's died – he can hear Joe calling him: _Nicolo, destati._ The words mean nothing, not yet. He doesn't know the name or the language. There's only the sound, tugging him away from cold nothingness and back into a warmth that rings with pain.

He becomes Nicky again, aware of his face against a hard surface, his hands bound uncomfortably together. His lungs scratch with each inhale still. 

The words come again, and this time, Nicky knows them. He knows himself, knows what the words mean. Knows who is speaking them. He inhales raggedly, because he also knows how worried Joe will be. It is hard on Joe, the times when Joe comes back first and is made to watch Nicky when he is, technically, dead. 

So, Nicky answers as soon as he can, before he's even opened his eyes. 

As soon as he does, he can see how afraid Joe is. He wears this fear defensively, an almost anger at the men surrounding them. He is angry with them, but he's more afraid for Nicky than anything else. Nicky's heart breaks as he listens to Joe outline everything he is, because even though Joe doesn't say this part out loud, Nicky hears it anyway: _In case this is the last time, Nicolo. In case you walk to your death this time, take these words with you in your heart. If you are hurt this time beyond what you think you can endure, remember what you still have waiting for you._

But mostly it's Joe pleading with Nicky not to go at all.

…

Nicky flinches a little as he lands on his ass on the floor of the van, the fall reverberating throughout his body. He glances up at Joe for the briefest of seconds. To anyone else, Joe would appear steady, but Nicky can feel the way that he's filled with turbulence. Nicky is scared too, but he keeps on a mask of calm because he knows that it will help Joe. He doesn't need to give Joe anything else to key into at the moment. 

It has always been like this. Nicky has to take care of himself in order to best take care of Joe. It was a bizarre lesson to learn in the beginning. Only then can he be ferocious in his own protection of Joe.

Nicky is pulled out of the van first, and he maintains a mask of almost amused indifference even though this is certainly one of the worst scrapes they've been in for quite some time. He can hear every gear grinding away in Joe's head behind him. He doesn't think that there will be an opportunity to escape right now, but he pays attention to Joe just in case he reads the situation differently.

He's fairly sure that he realizes before Joe that Joe is being led ahead of him. His throat closes up tight even before Keane issues his decree and gives breath to Nicky's worst fear. 

“Get that one on the plane,” Keane says, pointing clearly at Joe. He then turns his attention to Nicky. “Get that one secured _properly_ in the van, would you?” 

“Mr. Keane,” Copley starts to protest.

“This is the plan for two,” Keane answers flatly. “We only got two. They go to separate labs.” 

Nicky becomes a void. Joe's reaction is immediate, his emotion so loud that it fills Nicky and that's all Nicky can feel. He wants to reach for Joe, to comfort him. _You don't know what you're doing to him,_ Nicky thinks. _You couldn't survive half of what you're putting him through. You can't even understand all the emotion he feels right now._

Joe is calling for him. _Shh, my love,_ Nicky is feeling. 

Nicky is only partially aware of the way they're rearranging his body. He knows that there's no opening to try and escape, but little else. He's suddenly chained more tightly, his range of motion more limited. He's gathered up and turned back toward the van, and Joe's fear hits a new, sharp note.

Nicky tries to distill himself back into the physicality of the moment. He listens to Joe's shouting and twists so that he can see Joe's face again. Joe's dark eyes are a pure plea – he always shows everything there, his lover overflowing with emotion. 

_Yusuf,_ Nicky answers. _I see you._

He dies to the sound of Joe calling his name.

…

Nicky wakes up to silence and a bullet lodged in the back of his throat. He coughs it up and flinches. 

“Joe?” he asks, his voice rough. He's used to having Joe's hands on him by this point, fingers smoothing away the pain. Instead, he's just aware of the way that his skull still feels cracked. He gives himself a moment more with his eyes closed. He raises his head slowly once they're opened and takes in the sight of the empty van around him. Everything that just happened unspools in front of him again. Nicky groans and sets his head back down. 

He's splayed on his belly, arms chained behind him at his wrists and elbows. The strain is hell on his shoulders. His ankles are still chained together, but the chains are connected to something else in the van so he has little give in how much he can move.

Nicky breathes out. Even though Joe must be miles and miles away now, Nicky is certain that he can feel Joe's fear like acid in the back of his throat. 

Nicky shifts the best that he can, wrapping his right hand around his left wrist. He hopes this drive is a little bit longer as he begins to break the bones he needs to push his hand through the first cuff.

When the doors open, Nicky has his wrists free, but his elbows are still soundly chained. Despite the little progress he's made, the guards are quite irritated with him. The first one that climbs in knocks his head against the ground before pressing the muzzle of a gun to the base of his neck while the others begin to work on extracting him.

“You're a sneaky bastard, aren't you?” the guard above him asks.

“I assure you,” Nicky answers, “my parents were married before the eyes of God.”

Joe would have rather liked that one, Nicky thinks as they pull him to his feet and shuffle him into the building they've brought him to. It has the same name and logo stamped on it as the plane. Whoever has captured them is obviously rich and believe themselves powerful enough to get away with this. They should be easy to track, particularly because it seems like the goal was to capture all four of them – and Keane had let it slip that they hadn't gotten Andy, Booker, or Nile. Andy's already been in such a bad mood for the last few years that Nicky almost feels bad for these people.

He, himself, is steady as they lead him through the maze of rooms to the promised lab. He doesn't tempt fate by asking what exactly these people could do to him – he doesn't know. He suspects that that it will be little when he can heal from any manner of death. But, as they've seen before, humanity can sometimes be more creative than expected when it comes to them.

Really, Nicky is worried about Joe more because he knows that Joe will be near frantic without him. He will put himself more at a risk for the barest hint of a chance of helping Nicky. 

They will all come for each other. Nicky knows that. Book and Andy will find them. 

But, for Joe's sake, Nicky decides that it would be better if he gets himself out of here a little faster.

Unceremoniously, Nicky is strapped down to a table. They hook him up to a couple of machines, which he watches with passing interest. The guards who brought him in are still watching warily, clutching their guns. They think they're being cautious by binding him again.

They're not being cautious enough because he's not as well bound as he was in the van. 

Nicky has had a lot of time spent slipping bindings. It's even easier when you're willing to dislocate and break and rub raw bits of yourself.

He breaks free twice before they start keeping him in an almost-drugged stupor, two guards with him at all times. Things are … hazy after that.

The only thing that comes through the ether is the pain. Most of the time he's lost in half-formed memories of times with Joe – Malta, particularly, his brain obviously trying to give him an easy out. He'll be lost in the swell and warmth of Joe's lips when they slice through his chest, bringing him back into that punctuation of pain.

“Yusuf!” he cries out more than once, not knowing where he is, crying for Joe – not knowing if he's calling to himself to go back to where he is safe or calling for Joe to come and find him. What is a death if he's not waking up to Joe anyway?

But there's only ever the answering indifference of the doctors cutting into him and plucking at him. They ask him questions about how things feel and other things they hope to turn into data. Nicky doesn't think he answers to them – doesn't want to answer to them, but maybe he does, babbles in old languages that they don't know anyway. Half talking to Joe anyway. Half telling Joe that he is okay.

The last time they carve deep into his chest; the last time, he sees Joe as he was the very first time they'd met. He'd been a body to Nicky then – he'd had to be. That was the only way that Nicky could deal with the carnage in front of him. Killing in the name of his Lord God hadn't been as glorious as Nicolo di Genova had imagined when he'd pledged himself to the holy crusade. So, it had been easier to see each person in front of him as a corpse already. 

Yusuf Al-Kaysani had refused to be dead, even then, even in Nicolo's mind. Everything around them had been utter chaos and, yet, Nicolo's gaze had fixated on Yusuf's eyes, which screamed at Nicky that he was alive, a human, who was feeling so much as he tried to protect his home. He was fearless and fierce, competent on the battlefield and, yet, wasted because he should have been doing so many other wonderful things. He should have been writing poetry, he should have been drawing, should have been a lover--

Nicolo di Genova had faltered but Yusuf Al-Kaysani had not, and his sword had bit deep and true, taking away the first of Nicky's lives. Nicky would never be sure later, but he thought that he had seen sorrow in Joe's eyes at that point too. 

He's swimming in that sorrow.

_Nicolo._

Nicky's eyes flutter, heavy. He tries to make them open

_Nicolo, look at me!_ He feels Joe's fingers upon his cheeks, the sign to come home, the sign to come back to his love--

But when Nicky opens his eyes this time, Joe is not there. The pain still is – growing, worse and worse. He looks down at himself and can hardly process the sight in front of him. He is slit from throat to navel. He's never seen so much before, and his muddied brain struggles with it – that his insides are both inside and out at the same time, like how he's both alive and dead at the same time right now. His heartbeat picks up erratically. 

Someone approaches him and he looks up even though he's dizzy and there's a roar of white noise in his ears. The doctor glances at him for a moment, but if she's concerned about him or that he's awake, it doesn't show on her face. She begins to push a metal lining against the edges of the incision. The pain is white hot, blotting out everything else. He's only that pain for a moment, his body convulsing with it. Only once the first ride of it is done and he has eyesight again does he realize why they're putting the metal in his body: it's a lining to keep his skin from stitching himself back together.

“No,” Nicky protests for the first time. “Not that.” His words are slurred. Each one is a rock that he must spit out, but he does so. 

They don't understand. Nicky doesn't know if he can heal from this when it's all done. This will worry Joe. They don't know what they're doing to Joe. They don't understand all of who Joe is, how important he is. 

He just needs to explain – if they'd seen Joe's eyes –

He slips back into unconsciousness that is nearer to death than death itself.

…

_Nicolo._

Mostly sound, swallowed by the empty void of what once might again become Nicky. 

_Nicolo._

At the least the recognition of sound this time, even if not the name, not the language. The sound comes with an urging, an instinct, that is as basic as the body knitting itself back together. Air rushes back into Nicky's lungs. His ribcage becomes intact. Nicky opens his eyes.

He sees the man in front of him and unconsciously understands that this is what he is too – a human man with the body of such. He has no clear, definite thoughts just yet. There's merely the sensation of being.

“Nicky?” 

Still without thought, but there's more urges: to answer, to comfort, to be. 

He tries: “Who...?” but it's hard. It isn't supposed to be this hard, is it? That's his first real thought, confusion welling inside of him. He's done this all before, hasn't he? 

There are more words – words that don't belong to him. Too many words to follow, said out of his line of sight. He's becoming lost in the reeds of his own thoughts, trying to encourage them to knit back together too. The pain in his chest is receding. 

“Nicky.” The word is sounding familiar now, but more pressing is the touch upon his face – almost shocking with the newness of it. Nicky looks up at the man touching him, unable to think through the magnanimity of this moment, how profound it is. His first touch with another being like him, and, yet, some older part of him knows that this is a repetition, the thousandth time this has happened.

He shuts his eyes, trying to focus. He wants to answer. He's supposed to answer. He tries to see his own words in his own mind before he forms them, but they keep getting blown away in his own head, much less staying long enough to make his mouth work.

When he opens his eyes again, the man is gone. Stubbornly, Nicky keeps fighting himself, keeps trying to make the words come, any words come. Someone takes his hand, another feeling that doesn't hurt, but it's not the man that was there before, and Nicky is trying very hard to make all the disparate parts of himself come together.

They do. Like a lightning strike in the midst of a long-brewing storm. 

Before he's even entirely aware of it – aware that he knows who he is, that he can speak again – he's calling for Joe.

“Joe! _Yusuf!_ ”

He pulls away from Nile, unable to help himself. He's half fumbling, trying to get to his feet. His body is still weak in many ways. The brain is such a complex thing to heal. But it's enough for him to know he needs Joe, to know that Joe needs him.

Joe bursts back through the doors. Nicky moves toward him like gravity. He grabs at Joe as tightly as he can as more of his memories come rushing back in. Joe, on the other side of the van, saying he's all and he's more. Nicky never entirely forgets, but, oh, what it's like to remember again. 

He becomes aware that Joe is crying, really clinging to him. His tears slide down the side of Nicky's neck. He doesn't know the details of whatever happened to Joe, but he knows the physical pain, whatever it might have been, doesn't really mean anything to Joe. He knows that Joe is crying right now because he was afraid that he had lost Nicky.

But he hasn't, so Nicky hushes him quietly, reminds him that he's here, that he hasn't gone, that he loves him too. He says the words in old Italian, the first language they ever shared together, words sometimes faltering when they tried to explain something to one another. Even when they'd had the words, back then, they hadn't always had enough of the same shared experience for the language to matter. Now, they've been together for so long that they create a language of their own, a conversation of Nicky and Joe that can sometimes be indecipherable to outsiders.

He holds Joe until he quiets marginally. They heal so fast, and, yet, this is going to take some time to fix. Luckily, they have time.

When he pulls back, Nicky is so relieved to see his eyes again. Joe isn't meeting his gaze, though, running his fingers over Nicky's chest like that can soothe the pain away faster. Maybe it can, for all Nicky knows.

“Perhaps we should save that for the bedroom, no?” Nicky asks, because he wants to see Joe's smile again too. And Joe does laugh, if wetly. Belatedly, Nicky realizes that the rest of their little family is here too – Andy near the door, Nile still beside the table Nicky woke up on. Booker is standing awkwardly away from them. Nicky can't read the set of his body in a rare instance, so he winks, thinking Book will appreciate being in on the joke. 

Booker flinches, Joe pulls him tight, and Nicky starts to get a sense of just how wrong things have gone.

…

Nicky's heart breaks. He didn't know it could still break like this and in so many ways. Everything else has already been so much that he just wants to curl up with Joe and be close to him in all the ways that he can.

Instead, he first has to hear about how Andy is, more or less, dying. He can't imagine their lives without her. With the exception of their first messy century, Andy has been their guiding star, their fixed point. Andy taught them how to be really immortal. Honestly, despite knowing otherwise, a final death did seem like a myth to Nicky until he sees the gunshot wound near Andy's hip.

He's barely even given time to work through all of that when she tells him what happened with Booker. Perhaps it's not right, but that hurts him more. Andy, for the most part, is out of his hands. 

But Booker – he has loved Booker as his brother since the moment they brought him into the fold. He knows that Booker has been unhappy, but he had thought it would pass. He had thought that this was just a phase of his long life, but, at the end of the day, he understood that they were there for him. Apparently not. And Nicky finds that as some kind of shortcoming on his own part – that they didn't show Book enough, that they didn't love Book well enough.

And he also has no idea on how to fix that now. Joe's anger will last for a long time, because every time that Joe sees Booker he will see Nicky on that table with his body held apart, suspended in a perpetual state of death. 

He wants to cry for Booker because he feels Booker's pain, and he wants to be angry with Booker because Booker has gone and thrown away his best chance for healing. 

(And some dark part of him is distressed because it feels as if he was asked to chose between helping Book and saving Joe. And they all know the decision there. Maybe that is part of the problem. Joe and Nicky will always chose each other above all the others and Nicky can't apologize for this because that is just what Joe and Nicky are.)

Joe will need Booker to leave for some time, and Nicky will support him, because Nicky will need Joe to learn how to see Book without seeing just pain. And that's still wrong, some part of Nicky knows. Book probably needs them more than anything now. And, again, Nicky choses Joe. 

He feels sick with emotion when they leave the rest of the group. 

He needs Joe in so many different ways. He needs to feel Joe to know that Joe is truly okay too. He needs to reassure Joe that he's fine. And he needs Joe to make him forget the bad for a little bit. He needs the good things that they've accumulated and built together.

Nicky reaches for Joe as soon as they're behind the door, and Joe is right there with him. Just that sends relief flushing through Nicky's veins.

Joe pushes him up against the door, and Nicky relishes the hard line of Joe's body against his. He's alive. He feels alive. His body thrums underneath Joe's touch, and Nicky angles his mouth up to kiss Joe as hard as he can, perhaps with too much teeth and tongue, but Joe certainly isn't complaining. He just shoves a hand underneath Nicky's shirt, and Nicky shivers at the warmth of his hands, at the familiar brush of his rings. 

Fuck. He wants to grab at Joe's hand and outline it with his tongue, suck his fingers into his mouth and play with those rings against the edges of his teeth. It's all just too much and the only option right now is for everything to be fast and rough. Otherwise, the onslaught of options is too much. 

“Joe,” Nicky whispers, aching, needing to hear Joe's voice, needing to know that he's in the same place right now. 

And sure enough, the answer comes: “ _I need you.”_

Nicky needs him too. Needs to taste him, to feel the shift of his muscles, to be as close to one as they ever get. But he also needs Joe to know that he isn't gone, because he knows that's half of what Joe's saying right now. Joe is still back in that lab, making bargains and fighting for Nicky. 

“ _You have me,_ ” Nicky answers, hoping the certainty his voice will help, will ground Joe more readily here and with him. He runs his hand along Joe's broad back – he wants to watch the way Joe's shoulders shift when he fucks him, he wants to mouth at Joe's spine as he fucks him in return – and then lets his hand curl in Joe's hair. That single touch is almost always one of the best anchors to Nicky. He's certain he'd cry if Joe were to cut his hair any shorter than it is now.

Joe gives into him. The lab is gone. The betrayal and waning immortality is gone. It's just the two of them, merging together. Nicky closes his eyes and listens to Joe's heavy breathing come in huffs against the side of his neck. He grinds incessantly against Joe's thigh, wishing that he was as talented with words as Joe so he could wax poetical about the perfection of Joe's thighs.

“ _Beautiful,_ ” Joe tells him, and Nicky can't help but laugh a little. He's so loved. Joe never lets him forget for a moment how loved he is, and Nicky is delirious with it. And also amused that while he's wanting for words, Joe never is.

He's alight with all of that – this fierce desire, love, happiness, protection – when he tumbles over. He clings to Joe as if he can bring him over through sheer will as well. Perhaps he does, because Joe comes right away too. Every one of his breaths is hot on Nicky's throat.

Time comes back to them, slowing a little. Some of the urge has been released, both of them reassured that the other is still there. They'll be able to indulge each other now. Nicky breathes out and it feels like it's the first time that it hasn't hurt since he came back this time.

He presses his fingers to Joe's chin and tilts it up so that he can kiss him again – properly, slow, so that Joe knows that while Nicky is always desperate for him, he also loves him beyond that. 

“Shower,” Nicky suggests, because he still tastes chemicals in the back of his throat and smells them in his hair.

They head into the bathroom together and this could almost be any time – after any mission, when they're a little sore and very grungy. They're playful and careful with each other at the same time, a constant reminder that they love each other outside of the grand declarations that Joe is so prone to. Nicky smiles at the memory.

“You know,” he says, unable to help himself. “If my kiss still thrills you after a millennia, what does my dick do for you?” He worries, for a brief moment, that it's too soon. That maybe this will take Joe back to bad memories or make light of what Joe said. While those words do matter, they are common between the two of them, like breathing.

But in the end, Joe laughs, so Nicky is warmed.

“Nico, you'e a menace,” he answers, just as Nicky had hoped he would. He slaps Nicky on the ass in a way that sends an echo of pleasure through him, his gut clenching at the reminder of just coming.

Showering with Joe is one of Nicky's favorite pastimes. Running water is still a marvel. To be able to clean so efficiently after sex or battle is such a luxury. But he always feels particularly close to Joe when they're standing here together, a little vulnerable, as if the rest of the world has ebbed away for the time being.

In many ways, Nicky knows that he was the more lucky of the two of them in their capture. He didn't have to see Joe slit open and debased into body parts instead of a human being. He'll have his imagination to compensate for that, but he knows it won't compare to what Joe felt while he waited for Nicky to be able to remember their names. 

Part of Nicky spares a thought for Book in that moment. He supposes that's what he really doesn't understand. This isn't just them all loving each other well enough. He would have thought hate was needed to condemn someone to such a fate. He wonders how Booker could let Joe be hurt like that when he knows how much Nicky loves him. Is that precisely why? Does part of Booker hate the way they're completed by one another? Did it hurt him so much that he was willing to let one suffer through the other's pain just so that he could figure out how to die? 

He doesn't want to think about Booker anymore. Joe is the one who deserves him right now. 

“ _You are okay?_ ” Nicky murmurs. He presses a kiss to Joe's heart. He knows the answer is no in many ways – no when it comes to what Nicky went through. But Nicky wants to know if Joe is okay in and of himself, if the physicality of what he went through in the lab was taxing beyond what they normally go through.

“Yes,” Joe promises, and Nicky hears the answer: that he will tell Nicky all those little horrors later. 

They dry off together, eyes still fixed on the other. They go to bed together, curling into another warm, safe space and face one another. What a marvel he is, Nicky thinks suddenly, looking at Joe. For all he accuses Joe of being an incurable romantic, sometimes he thinks that the only reason they were gifted immortality is so they would have enough time to learn how to love each other. It's so inevitable now, but it was far from simple in the beginning.

“ _I dreamt of you,_ ” Nicky tells him. “ _Of the first time we met. The first times we killed each other._ ” It's been so long that those emotions have long since faded – and it is fun to teasingly swap those stories in front of Nile. But when he focuses, Nicky can also remember the desolation of believing God had rejected his soul so completely that he was damned beyond hell – that he was damned to walk among mankind. That, perhaps, he didn't even have a soul. Joe's dark, uncomprehending stare had been his only answer for the longest time, and they had definitely hated each other for many of their first years together. 

So, maybe to Nile and Booker and even Andy, their love seems so fluid as if they'd been joined as once since the moment they struck each other down. But Nicky knows better. They had to work so hard for this. They needed all those years to bridge the worlds between them. 

Nicky leans his forehead against Joe's and concentrates on the feeling of Joe's fingers on his skin. Sometimes, he loves him so much that it's like a physical pain. 

“ _Take me,_ ” Nicky whispers, half begging. He'd do anything to express his love for Joe a little more articulately. 

Joe agrees, because what else is there to do? Nicky shifts in the bed, turning on his side, breathing deep while Joe goes to retrieve the lube. Joe presses up against him from behind.

The first press of Joe's fingers inside of him is warm and slow. Nicky's body welcomes him home. He allows Joe to set the pace for the time being, taking his pleasure from how he molds Nicky's body to his will. Eventually the heat gets to be too much. Nicky is burning up, biting at his lower lip. He pushes his hips back despite himself. 

“Impatient,” Joe accuses him, but he hears Joe's love even in that.

“For you?” Nicky responds, letting his love flow into the banter as well. “Always.”

He can feel Joe's smile. Joe rocks into him, and Nicky breathes. This is like Joe calling his name after he's first come back to life, like catching Joe's eye across a crowded room and knowing everything the man is thinking without needing an actual language, like realizing that, perhaps, this wasn't damnation but the greatest gift that God could have bestowed upon him--

“I love you,” Nicky tells Joe. There's no chance that Joe doesn't know that. They tell each other it in every way that they know, every language they know. They say it in how their bodies move together and how they protect each other in a fight and how they laugh together. But sometimes, Nicky thinks, the words need to the bluntest versions of themselves. Sometimes they need to just be. Nicky hopes that it's enough. He thinks that it is if Joe's reactions are anything to go by.

“You are everything,” Joe answers, his breath curling against the shell of Nicky's ear. Nicky is on fire. They're still moving together, slow and rocking, but Nicky _needs._

“Joe,” Nicky whispers like a prayer, a name he knows better than his own. Joe touches him, and Nicky is brought back to an edge of the universe where there is only this man, this great love. “Joe. _Joe_.”

“Nicky,” Joe answers, slow and soft as Nicky trembles and comes. He tightens and grinds back against Joe, needing to feel the splash of warmth that will come from Joe filling him. It comes and Joe's teeth sink into Nicky's skin, a lightning burst of pleasure that brings Nicky sighing back into his own body. 

In the morning, he will wake to the soft sound of Joe calling his name: _Nicolo, Nicolo._

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
> \-- Short comments  
> \-- Long comments  
> \-- Questions  
> \-- “<3” as extra kudos  
> \-- Reader-reader interaction
> 
> This author replies to comments.
> 
> shout at me on [tumblr](https://kneesofthebee.tumblr.com/)


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